Sick pervs

A while ago Brent asked what I would think of a new and improved law to ban "crush videos." For the record, few things horrify me as much as the sight of brutal creeps killing pets that are screaming in fear and pain:



So I'm all for criminalizing videos, because what this nation really needs is more excuses for jackbooted thugs to break into homes in the middle of the night, and more reasons for goons in body armor to shoot your dogs and place you under arrest.

Not.

The seven year old child in that video will hear his dogs screaming for the rest of his life. Oh, and check this out: after the cops broke the door down, terrorized the family, shot the house up and killed one of the family dogs [the other was shot but survived — you gotta love when grown men wearing enough body armor to stop a f*ing tank have to shoot a corgi], the parents were charged with child endangerment. I repeat, the PARENTS. were charged with child endangerment. On account of a bag of dope, for crissakes. Yay War on [some] Drugs! I feel so much safer. Shit.

"If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch." [Thurgood Marshall]

Here's how things are right now. We have entire websites devoted to the corruption and brutality and militarization of the police. Reporting on pets killed by cops is a growth industry. And in spite of all this, our legislators, in their boundless, staggering idiocy, want to give MORE power to the state to invade homes and arrest people.

And this will help animals? How, exactly?

I would bet money that cops on raids kill more dogs in a month, in the U.S., than there are people selling crush videos online. Want to reduce animal cruelty? Then don't give cops even more power to invade homes, arrest people and kill pets.

Fun fact: downloading the video above could totally have led to your arrest and imprisonment under the animal-cruelty video law [pdf] ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.


Edited to add: fallout.


Related:
Radley Balko [Essential reading. "There are 100-150 of these raids every day in America, the vast, vast majority like this one, to serve a warrant for a consensual crime."]

"This is what evil looks like" [from Obsidian Wings, with a terrific comment thread]

And this, on another police development: "[The] whole thing appears, rightly or wrongly, to be law enforcement doing the bidding of a private company."